Agenda item

Report of the Deputy Chief Executive and Chief Finance Officer.

Scrutiny considered the report of the Chief Finance Officer providing the provisional outturn results for 2015/16.  The final outturn report would form part of the statement of accounts that would be reported to the Audit and Governance committee in June and Cabinet in July.

The General Fund - figures included the transfers to and from reserves as shown in Appendix 2 of the report.

The General fund service expenditure variance for the year was principally as a result of:

·    Theatre show increased income achieved (principally from the pantomime) (£203,000).

·    Savings on street cleansing contract (£102,000).

·    Surplus on catering trading account (£101,000).

·    Additional income and expenditure savings on bereavement service (£74,000).

These had, however, been offset in part by the following negative variances:

·    Redundancy payments (£109,000).

·    Rental income from corporate properties (£83,000).

The committee was advised that work was still underway reconciling some accounts and in particular the Housing Benefit Subsidy and Housing Benefits overpayments. It had been assumed for this report that these budgets would be on target, but experience from past years had indicated that this could vary considerably. Any changes would be reported as part of the final outturn report to the next meeting of Scrutiny.

Housing Revenue Account (HRA) - The table at Appendix 3of the report summarised the HRA performance for 2015/16 and showed a surplus of (£559,000). This represented a variance of (£218,000) against the revised budget of (£341,000).  The principle reason for this variance was due to savings in council tax on void properties, lower insurance premium, low demand on the under-occupations transfer scheme and savings resulting from Future Model restructuring. 

Capital Programme - A summary of capital expenditure for the year was shown in Appendix 4 of the report.  The revised capital programme for 2015/16 was £19.9m and the outturn was £18.0m. This was a variance of £1.9m; (£0.3m) for general fund and £2.2m for HRA. A detailed reason for the variance against each scheme was also shown at Appendix 4 of the report. 

The Senior Corporate Development Officer advised the committee that the Corporate Plan and performance quarter 4 and year-end report would be presented in full at the next meeting in September allowing for a full “end-of-life” assessment report of the 2010-2015 Plan to be considered.  Scrutiny would also receive the Quarter 1 outturn 2016/17.

The Senior Corporate Development Officer took the opportunity to re-introduce the Covalent Browser to Members and explain the proposed approach for monitoring and managing the new Corporate Plan. Members were also advised that refresher training for accessing Covalent would be scheduled for the beginning of August and end of September should any Members wish to attend as well as ad-hoc support being available to them through the Corporate Development team.

RESOLVED: (1) That the provisional general fund outturn on services expenditure for 2015/16 of £16.427m, a net favourable variance of £195,000 against the revised budget, be noted.

(2) That the transfers to and from reserves as set out at appendix 2 of the report be noted.

(3) That the provisional housing revenue account surplus for 2015/16 of £559,000 be noted.

(4) That the final capital programme and outturn for 2015/16 of £18.0m be noted.